The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hill, by Horace Annesley Vachell

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Title: The Hill
A Romance of Friendship

Author: Horace Annesley Vachell

Release Date: October 23, 2007 [EBook #23154]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HILL ***

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_ALSO BY HORACE A. VACHELL_

QUINNEYS'

THE HILL

A ROMANCE OF FRIENDSHIP

HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET

FIRST EDITION _April, 1905_

_Fortieth Impression_ _Jan., 1950_

Transcriber's Note:

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Greek
text has been transliterated and is shown between {braces}.

To
GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL

I dedicate this Romance of Friendship to you with the sincerest pleasure
and affection. You were the first to suggest that I should write a book
about contemporary life at Harrow; you gave me the principal idea; you
have furnished me with notes innumerable; you have revised every page of
the manuscript; and you are a peculiarly keen Harrovian.

In making this public declaration of my obligations to you, I take the
opportunity of stating that the characters in "The Hill," whether
masters or boys, are not portraits, although they may be called,
truthfully enough, composite photographs; and that the episodes of
Drinking and Gambling are founded on isolated incidents, not on habitual
practices. Moreover, in attempting to reproduce the curious admixture of
"strenuousness and sentiment"--your own phrase--which animates so
vitally Harrow life, I have been obliged to select the less common types
of Harrovian. Only the elect are capable of such friendship as John
Verney entertained for Henry Desmond; and few boys, happily, are
possessed of such powers as Scaife is shown to exercise. But that there
are such boys as Verney and Scaife, nobody knows better than yourself.

Believe me,
Yours mos